Issue No 4: Judging a book by its cover.

Welcome to our fourth instalment of the Gradwell Business Leader Inspirational Series.

The series aims to take a slightly philosophical, yet comical and logical approach to basic business topics.

Judging a Book for his cover

I spent a few hours in the evening this week looking at my bookshelves, reflecting on the books that I have collected over the years and how my choice of books mirrors changes in perspective that I have embraced in both my personal and business adventures. It struck me that my bookshelves track a history that is deep and established, not what I have browsed over the internet, but what I was willing to invest my time, money and effort into at that particular moment in my life.

The thought also struck me that these bookshelves were not shaped in one wild splash out on bright shiny new books, but actually reflect years of study, of intense thought and reflection and that was just the Beano Annuals. It represents a lifetime of work on one item, me.

A new book always offers promise and potential, but once you have read it, then invariably it is cast aside, its often then just fodder for the charity shop.

The books that you keep, the books that you read over and over again are the classics, the ones that were slaved over to produce something enduring and worthwhile, and in turn they are the books that we invest time and effort in because they are worthwhile, because every time we open them they deliver that promise and potential over and over again.

I would suggest our business services, the calls, the connectivity and the cloud are very similar. The classics, the ones that our customers turn to time and time again, subtly tell their friends and colleagues that they are winners. Those core services are the ones that our company has lavished effort, energy, time and skills into, those services are the ones that every single time one of our customers uses them, they gain the promise and potential that was present when we first started delivering the service. In fact in some cases they may even see a new improved edition, time and time again, without even noticing that it’s actually even better than before.